#Bookreview – Telling Sonny by Elizabeth Gauffreau

Good morning! Before I head off to a day of meetings, I am thrilled to share Robbie Cheadle’s review of my novel TELLING SONNY. Robbie’s review means the world to me because of how well she understood and cared about my characters. Faby and Sonny are so near and dear to my heart!

What Amazon says

Forty-six-year-old FABY GAUTHIER keeps an abandoned family photograph album in her bottom bureau drawer. Also abandoned is a composition book of vaudeville show reviews, which she wrote when she was nineteen and Slim White, America’s self-proclaimed Favorite Hoofer (given name, LOUIS KITTELL), decided to take her along when he played the Small Time before thinking better of it four months later and sending her back home to Vermont on the train. Two weeks before the son she had with Louis is to be married, Faby learns that Louis has been killed in a single-car accident, an apparent suicide. Her first thought is that here is one more broken promise: Louis accepted SONNY’s invitation to the wedding readily, even enthusiastically, giving every assurance that he would be there, and now he wouldn’t be coming. An even greater indignity than the broken promise is that Louis’s family did not…

Hey Liz – hearty congratulations! Robbie has penned a wonderfully compelling review that teases and tantalises in equal measure and plucks readily at the proverbial heartstrings. Her words and the comments that follow must surely inspire and tempt you to scribe another novel: press-on whilst the writing-iron is hot!

Thank you for reading and commenting, Dewin! The inspiration is heading in the short story direction for a collection of Enosburg stories. In Enosburg and many (most?) small new England towns, there are blocks of businesses on Main Street with apartments above them. I’m drawn to those blank windows facing Main Street and the stories of the people who live behind them.